81: Chapter 81 After the Fire

The street outside the Qinghe No. 1 Safe House looked no different than usual after daybreak.

The breakfast stalls were open for business as usual, the convenience store had new crates of bottled water out front, and an elderly resident from the neighboring housing complex walked past the intersection with a vegetable basket, grumbling about not sleeping well the night before.

But everyone living in the vicinity knew that something was wrong last night.

Around two in the morning, someone heard every mobile phone on the entire street ring simultaneously.

Someone saw a driverless night bus stopped at the intersection through a gap in their curtains; its headlights were off, but the doors were open.

Others said they had been forcibly dragged away from downstairs by a young man, and just as they were about to curse him out, they saw a streak of fire descend upon the intersection.

The fire wasn't red, nor was it blindingly bright; it was like a star crashing into the fog.

The neighborhood group chat had exploded early in the morning.

"Did anyone see the bus last night? I wasn't dreaming, right?"

"Don't ask, if you ask, it's just 'old wiring'."

"Can old wiring conjure up a bus?"

"My kid said someone was hitting the bus door with a stick downstairs; I suspect he's been watching too many cartoons."

"Stop posting random videos. The clip I took yesterday just shows a black screen, and my phone got hot."

Finally, someone sent a message: "If you see grey-white firelight at night, don't go near it; hide far away first."

This message had no known source, yet many people silently saved it.

Inside the Safe House, Tang Zhiwei slammed her tablet face-down on the table, her expression grim.

"It's spreading too fast."

She had barely slept last night, dark circles were visible under her eyes, and her coffee had gone cold. She pointed to several screenshots of group chats on the screen, "We can't keep using the same camouflage for the Safe House perimeter. If this continues, even the person selling pancakes downstairs will know there's something wrong with this street."

Zhao Ye leaned against the doorframe, a split still visible in the sole of his shoe. He had stepped on gravel when the star fire landed last night and only realized his shoe had come apart after he returned.

"Then we change locations."

Tang Zhiwei glanced at him, "You make it sound easy. A Safe House isn't a tent; moving it costs money, requires vehicles, manpower, and we have to deal with the isolation rooms and storage cabinets."

Zhao Ye looked down at his shoe, "Then I'm applying for reimbursement first."

The room went quiet for a moment.

Bai Ya couldn't help but laugh out loud.

Shen Qinghe rubbed her temples, "Can you two finish discussing the actual business first?"

"This is the business," Zhao Ye said, lifting his foot and shaking it. "I almost left the sole of my foot at the intersection last night."

Tang Zhiwei looked at the split shoe and finally sighed, "Fine. Just don't treat your shoes as consumables next time."

Bai Ya turned the tablet toward himself and said lazily, "We can't suppress the rumors entirely. Total suppression looks like guilt. It's better for ordinary people to know to stay away from certain places than to know nothing at all."

Shen Qinghe frowned, "Rumors will also attract people who have a death wish."

"That's why we need to change the perimeter camouflage," Bai Ya said, looking up. "But don't treat every sighting as a security breach. If those residents hadn't run fast last night, there would be an extra row of beds in the hospital right now."

Lin Zhao sat nearby without interjecting. He had been responsible for the evacuation last night. One middle-aged man had cursed at him quite viciously when he was being dragged away, but later, his hands trembling, he offered Lin Zhao a cigarette. Lin Zhao didn't take it, but he remembered what the man said: "Brother, did I almost die just now?"

That sentence was more real than any report.

In the Xinhuo Hall, Lu Chen was also reviewing the Grey Net feedback.

The rumors surrounding the Safe House were like a tangled mess of thread—filled with fear, curiosity, and several clips that had clearly been edited. The Grey Net hadn't erased them all, only turning footage involving members' faces, the Mark of the Torch, and the core entrance of the Safe House into overexposed firelight.

Ordinary people remembered what had happened, but they couldn't see the whole picture.

Lu Chen felt this was just right.

Torch shouldn't turn everyone into sheep ignorant of danger. Darkness had already appeared, and ordinary people would see it sooner or later. The issue wasn't making them forget, but letting them know where to retreat when they saw the darkness.

Zero's prompt appeared.

[Abnormal traces outside the Safe House have been suppressed.]

[Grey Net has tracked three branching red lines.]

[Source localization failed.]

Lu Chen frowned.

On the Grey Net map, the three thin lines led to the Jiangbei Old District, the Southern Old Goods Warehouse District, and an area of grey fog that couldn't be accurately labeled. Those areas looked as if they had been covered by a rag; one could see things moving underneath, but couldn't touch their shape.

[Reason: Intersection of driverless night bus traces and Old Object Chain delivery rules.]

[Some nodes contain human packaging, concealment, and real-world logistics noise.]

[Suggestion: Supplement with real-world clues, Fire Seal coordinates, official records, and lists of Old Goods circulation.]

Lu Chen tapped the armrest.

This was the boundary of the Grey Net.

It could track traces burned by fire and pollution that had already been marked. But if an Old Object was packaged among thousands of ordinary goods, had not yet been triggered, and had not yet been pinned down by a Fire Seal, all the Grey Net could see was a mass of grey.

That was why Torch needed people.

It needed Gu Xingzhou's files, Li Guibing's Old Goods Circle lists, the deleted posts the Elf had fished out from the internet, the handwritten records Han Yue brought from Jiangbei, and it also needed those ordinary people who were afraid but still willing to say, "I saw it."

That evening, Gu Xingzhou received a processed surveillance screenshot.

In the screenshot, the projection of the bus was stopped at the intersection, the door half-open. In the center of the frame, a cluster of star fire descended, the firelight swallowing the human silhouettes until only shadows remained.

He stared at it for a long time, then wrote a new assessment in his report.

[Torch now possesses the prototype of a city-level abnormal emergency response.]

As soon as the report was uploaded, a call came in from Jiangbei.

The person on the other end had a hoarse voice, and there was arguing in the background.

"Team Leader Gu, another person has gone missing in the Old District."

"What was the last text message?"

The person on the other end was silent for two seconds.

"He said, he thinks he got off at the wrong stop."

Tang Zhiwei finally re-mapped the surveillance points around the Safe House perimeter.

It wasn't that she didn't understand the significance of Torch, nor did she want to suppress all the rumors. She was just all too aware of how many real-world resources were involved in everything from site selection to the renovation of a Safe House. Lease contracts, property management relations, vehicle access, medical supplies, isolation Materials—none of these things could just appear with a tap on a stone tablet.

"I'm not afraid of them knowing there is fire," Tang Zhiwei said, rubbing her temples. "I'm afraid of them knowing where the fire is."

For once, Bai Ya didn't continue laughing.

This was a very realistic statement.

If ordinary people knew that firelight would come, that was order. If people with ulterior motives knew where the firelight came from, that was a coordinate.

When Lu Chen heard this in the hall, he re-layered the Safe House permissions. Perimeter rumors would not be forcibly suppressed, the core entrance would be relocated, the movement paths of ordinary residents would avoid the storage rooms, and an additional identity verification would be added to the Candidate observation area.

These things lacked the thrill of a fight, but they were the details that allowed the organization to truly survive.

After listening to the list of adjustments, Zhao Ye only asked one thing: "So, can my shoes be reimbursed?"

Tang Zhiwei looked up at him.

"Yes."

Just as Zhao Ye was about to breathe a sigh of relief, she added, "But if you land in broken glass using star fire again, you're writing the accident report yourself."

Zhao Ye's expression stiffened.

Shen Qinghe lowered her head to drink water, pretending not to hear.

Gu Xingzhou closed his eyes.

The fire in Qinghe had not yet been completely extinguished, and the bus in Jiangbei had come again.